BEFORE there was a United States or a Mexico, Bernardo de Galvez, under orders from Spain in 1779, fought battles in Baton Rouge, Natchez, Mobile, Pensacola and Charlotte to prevent arms and supplies from reaching the British to be used against the colonials.

That’s why there’s a statue honoring Galvez in front of the State Department in Washington, D.C.

Arms embargoes are not a new thing between the neighboring territories, now nations. Galvez was at George Washington’s hand in the first July 4 parade.

Francisco Mart n Moreno, in his June 3 column in Excelsior, a Mexico City newspaper, brought up bi-national arms control embargoes of the past. Arms purchases might date to field marshal Pedro Garibay, who in 1809 proposed that New Spain buy rifles, cannons, ammunition and shrapnel in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York from the freewheeling arms dealers.

The United States even applied its neutrality laws and detained Gen. Victoriano Huerta, who was returning to Mexico from exile through U.S. territory in an attempt to overthrow the new constitutional government.

These were all considered discretionary acts by U.S. presidents. At one point, arms were sold to the rogue revolutionist Pancho Villa. And Calvin Coolidge made known in 1928 the United States had supplied arms to strengthen President Alvaro Obregon’s government in the closing days of the Revolution.

The point Francisco Mart n Moreno makes in his Excelsior column is that President Barack Obama has sufficient historical and judicial precedent to declare an arms embargo against those who are supplying U.S. weapons to the drug cartels.

International leaders have made it abundantly clear a new policy is needed to decriminalize some drug use, limit gunrunning, and money laundering by enablers, who are complicit in massive deaths.

If this keeps up, Francisco Mart n Moreno and others interested in history might want to research whether a Nobel Peace Prize winner has ever been recalled for failing to act when he could.

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